Contentions

I’m sure the Joe Biden “we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy” ad is in the works. But close behind will be the Barney Frank ad telling us that on the economy “the fundamentals are better than the psychology” (Phil Gramm smiles broadly), and advising us that of course we shouldn’t raise taxes — not yet:

MARIA BARTIROMO: So you agree: taxes should go up, then, on the top earners, even in this slow environment.
BARNEY FRANK: No. Not right away. I want to wait a year.

The latter points out just how extreme and unrealistic — or is it dishonest? — Barack Obama is being. Is he pushing a tax increase because he’s addicted to wealth distribution or just cynically playing on his base’s appetite for class warfare? Listen, if Barney Frank knows better, it is hard to imagine that Obama doesn’t. We are left wondering why he’s holding on to an ideologically extreme position.

There’s a bit of the surge phenomenon going on here. Well after it was obvious that the surge was working, Obama continued to deny reality and push for a timeline or even an immediate cut off of funding for the troops. Was he uninformed about the progress being made or afraid to offend his base?

This seems to be the pattern: Obama gets himself out on a policy limb (one that is invariably the farthest to the Left) and refuses to acknowledge error. Sometimes events bail him out (e.g. we wound up winning in Iraq despite the Democrats’ push for a retreat deadline), but sometimes he’s simply left with an intellectually indefensible position — on taxes or trade for example.

For a guy with a supposedly superior intellect and a magnificent temperament this is all quite puzzling. At the very least it suggests it won’t be easy to talk him out of his ultra-liberal positions.